The Girl That Could Have Been
by nightlock77
Summary: In another dimension, Jonathan was a good brother. Valentina Graymark is 17, and is training to protect the world she lives in from monsters and demons. A story set in Clary's dream world when they entered the demon realm.


Valentina Graymark yawned. The light spilling in from her window made her squint as she sat up and looked at the clock on her wall.

"Crap."

Throwing her covers off, she grabbed her gear and shoved it on as quickly as she could. Grabbing a hair tie from her dressing table, she raced out of the door. Wheeling around the final corner towards the training room, she skidded and fell.

"Val?" Jonathan poked his head out from around the door. "Are you okay?"

"Just fine," Val groaned, picking herself up gingerly.

"You ready?"

"Uh huh."

Val followed Jonathan into the training room. She grabbed her crossbow and some bolts from the table and moved in front of the target.

"Nope, not now. We know you have excellent aim; you're working on your balance today," Jonathan put a hand on her weapon and pointed it to the floor.

"It's not my fault I can't walk along a beam that's two centimeters wide for more than five seconds! I'm not like Clary, I'm tall!"

"I think you're exaggerating about the width of the beam. And your sister had trouble with this too."

"Only because she was staring at Jace the whole time," Val muttered. She moved over to the beam and hoisted herself up. Jonathan threw her a blunted short sword and pulled himself up onto the other end of the beam. Pulling her steel out of her hair-"I keep telling you, you'll set your hair on fire if you keep it there!"-she scribbled some runes on her arm; agility, endurance, and strength.

"I'm ready," she said, putting one foot behind the other, and putting her sword up as her brother's came swishing down. As his sword bounced up with a resounding clang, she ducked, anticipating Jonathan's next move. She hit the side of his knee with the flat of her sword, taking advantage of his wobble to right herself and move forward into an offensive position. Slashing her sword in an arc, she clipped his shoulder, making him overbalance, waving his arms around in an attempt to stay on the beam. Just as he'd balanced himself, Val caught him in the side with a kick, finally pushing him off.

"I guess you didn't put any balance runes on this morning, brother dear," Val laughed, jumping off, and landing next to his sprawled form.

"Nice one. Although I wouldn't get too cocky, that's the first one you've won in a week."

After another hour of balances and agility exercises, one of which involved Val wearing several kilograms of armour whilst practicing climbing and jumping, they moved onto improving her stealth. Val had to navigate the hallway, which had been covered in small noisy objects by her father whilst they were practicing, whilst Jonathan, blindfolded had to identify where she was.

"There." He pointed directly at her. This had occurred several times, and Val had been getting more and more frustrated, meaning she made more and more noise.

"How did you-"

"I can hear you again. Back to the start."

She sighed and stamped back. Her steel had been left in the other room, and her soundless rune she'd put on at the start had already begun to fade. Maybe this time, she could be a little sneakier about it. After all, they were on the ground floor, and there was a window at the other end of the hall…

As she carefully pulled the door to the garden open, Val saw her mother walking down the hall towards them.

"Trying to get out of training again?"

"I wasn't-that was one time, and this is different. I was employing extreme stealth tactics," she cried, throwing her arms up. Jonathan smirked and pulled his blindfold off.

"Is that what you call them these days? Extreme stealth tactics, as we run around the house trying to find you, eventually finding you on the edge of Brocelind Forest up a tree?"

"I WAS 12! No twelve-year-old should be cooped up studying the ancient demon language of LATIN, for crying out loud."

"Latin isn't a demon langu-" Jonathan started to point out

"It may as well be, because no human speaks it!"

Jocelyn ruffled Val's hair.

"You know it's for the best though, sweetheart. Your father and I are going to visit Clary and Jace, so we'll be back later, ok? Keep training, and don't set the house on fire. Or anything else for that matter."

"Yes mother," they chorused.

**A/N: When I was reading City of Heavenly Fire for the billionth time, an idea struck me. Obviously, you can tell what this idea was, as you're reading this story, but I just wondered what would have happened if Clary's demon-dream world was real in their universe.**

**I'm pretty excited for this story; I have a bunch of ideas, and more characters will appear in future chapters. I hope you enjoyed this, and please review!**


End file.
